Springtime was late. It’s true that the days were becoming increasingly sunnier, though the mornings were still bitterly cold with frost on the greenery and mist in the air. The scent that usually arrived on a curling breeze, an assurance that summer would present itself soon, was behind schedule. That lovely sensation that tells of warmth, the one that arrives to conclude the winter, was absent, with the middle of the day not brave enough to broach twenty degrees. The sun attempted to remind residents of its importance with a brief and welcome midday sting, but the people remained in woollen socks and warm cardigans despite October’s emergence. With it, a strong wind was blowing at least every few days – nature’s way of striving to push the winter out.
Though it was cold, some members of the natural world were cooperating with the Weather Curriculum. Though it remained to be a very humanist construction, the birds living in the trees surrounding Penny’s home and suburb had sensed fleeting moments of change, and so had begun to schedule and action their own adjustments in preparation for warmer times. This was duly noted by Penny, as she braved her thrice weekly morning walk and was attacked by territorial magpie-larks out to protect their nests from potential threats.
Penny knew she was a target because the same process happened on every occasion. She stood at the front of her cottage home, looking left and right for assailants in the trees, poised on their branches doing surveillance of the street. Often, Penny would carry out this portion of preparation with her coffee in hand, deciding as she sipped, whether turning left or right would be the safer option. She knew that either way, the vicious little birds would strike – it was just that one way was sometimes less inhabited than the other. That, or she might be able to time her walk so that one of the adults was out hunting, so that at least one family would be down an aggressor. The result was mostly the same each time. Penny would anticipate an attack by adding superfluous amounts of hairspray before she left her home, knowing that it was going to be pulled out of the meticulously crafted pony tail by the immoral, unwarranted and continued assault of the little birds. Penny eyed them assertively as she took calmly to the street. She knew full well that despite their innocuous appearance; their pencil thin legs and slender bodies, they were really very menacing. She thought of Janet, a woman from work who had the audacity to cross the rose garden on a journey from one building to another, and had been ambushed, with one of the magpie-larks pecking her right in the eyeball. She had to go to the hospital to have ‘beak matter’ removed from her eye. Penny’s insides became agitated at the thought of ‘beak matter.’ She had felt both revulsion and curiosity for the details of this phenomena, but when she saw Janet across the staff room at lunchtime, she did not have the heart to ask for the finer points of her experience.
Despite the early hour, Penny’s memory of what happened to Janet prompted her to move her prescription sunglasses from her head to her face, to avoid such an occurrence for herself. She braced herself for the onslaught she knew was unavoidable, fastening the clips of her cap under her thick pony tail and releasing a slow exhale as she moved towards the front of the house. Penny turned to her right outside the picket-gate, and was not three metres from her starting position when the avian predators began their attack. At first, they swooped threateningly without making contact, forewarning her to flee their turf. Penny walked on, briskly but without hurrying, in an attempt to send them back a message – a signal that she would not yield to their aggression. Her hands remained at her sides as she marched, fists balled in determination – she refused to swat their swooping away. The barrage continued increasing in intensity as the birds registered their trespasser’s folly and began to properly attack. Penny’s hair was grabbed at with tiny feet and multiple beaks, strands pulled out of place and out of her head as she tried quickly to get away. She persisted with staying upright, however, enduring the abuse stoically and telling herself that the more unexcitable she was, the less of a threat she would seem. Penny had decided that it was her assignment to re-shape this problem into a non-issue, therefore gaining the upper hand against the peewees.
Once she reached the end of her street, she sought refuge momentarily under a bus stop shelter to fix her hair. Penny straightened her collar, tied a shoelace that had already let itself loose in the commotion, and checked her step count. She felt good, proud of herself for not having given in to the temptation of shooing away the birds with her hands, and certain that soon enough, they would understand her mission and leave her alone.
Gabrielle Gassin 